ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of implementing long-stay beds for patients of low complexity and high dependency in small hospitals on the performance of an emergency referral tertiary hospital. METHODS For this longitudinal study, we identified hospitals in three municipalities of a regional department of health covered by tertiary care that supplied 10 long-stay beds each. Patients were transferred to hospitals in those municipalities based on a specific protocol. The outcome of transferred patients was obtained by daily monitoring. […]

OBJECTIVE To analyze the causes of delay in hospital discharge of patients admitted to internal medicine wards. METHODS We reviewed 395 medical records of consecutive patients admitted to internal medicine wards of two public teaching hospitals: Hospital das Clínicas of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and Hospital Odilon Behrens. The Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol was used to define the moment at which notes in the medical records indicated hospital stay was no longer appropriate and patients could be discharged. The […]

OBJECTIVE: To understand the process that led Brazilian philanthropic general hospitals to implement psychiatric units and to describe the main characteristics and therapeutic approaches of these services. METHODS: Ten institutions in three Brazilian states (Minas Gerais, São Paulo e Santa Catarina) were assessed in 2002. Forty-three semi-structured interviews were carried out with health professionals who worked at the hospitals to collect data on service implementation process, therapeutic approaches and current situation. The interviews were audio-recorded and their content was analyzed. […]

The objective of this study was to discover the resources of the hospital system of the Paraíba Valley, Brazil and to establish their relationships by finding the hospital bed-inpatient ratio. The number of discharges and deaths that occurred in the Valley’s general care hospitals in 1974 were studied so that certain variables (sex, age, residence) could be established. Analysis of these variables and their relationships furnished data for estimating bed need.